


xxiv. you're not making any sense

by tempestaurora



Series: the kids aren't alright [whumptober 2020] [24]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Panic Attacks, Pre-Canon, Seizures, Vanya Goes Off Her Meds Before Canon, Whump, Whumptober
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:27:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27177860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tempestaurora/pseuds/tempestaurora
Summary: When Vanya is twenty-seven, she decides to come off her anxiety medication.The result is a panic attack-turned-seizure, a totally unrelated earthquake and someone calling her emergency contact.
Relationships: Diego Hargreeves & Vanya Hargreeves
Series: the kids aren't alright [whumptober 2020] [24]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1930186
Comments: 20
Kudos: 193





	xxiv. you're not making any sense

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheMutantHonk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMutantHonk/gifts).



> Prompt: Sensory Deprivation
> 
> i forgot to write this before uhhhh less than an hour ago. look at me though. i did it
> 
> this was based on TheMutantHonk's idea of vanya getting kinda deafened by her powers when she's still new to them. it went in a sideways direction but this was the basis, thank u!

“You’re not making any sense—you’re not—oh my God, oh my God—”

“Vanya—VanyaVanyavanyavanya—”

She couldn’t—

She couldn’t breathe couldn’t see couldn’t hear—

Everything was a white light, blurring the world into smudges of grey. Where was she? What was happening? It was all so loud, so brightly focused and intense, and it _hurt._

“Help me, oh my God, help me—”

“Do you know who…”

“She has sibl—”

“Where’s her phone…”

Vanya was barely aware of her own body. She was surrounded by noise that washed over her in thunderous waves, and at the same time, she was in silence. It was all so loud there was nothing at all. Her senses vanished behind the haze. She couldn’t reach her body anymore, couldn’t reach her hands or legs or face—Did she still _have_ a face? She must, she must, because she couldn’t lose it, even to the light and the ringing.

“What happ—”

She was gone, in some other place. _Vanya Vanya Vanya Vanya—_ she was lost in the maze and the thunder and the sea. It was white. It was all white. Pure, raw, blistering. She couldn’t fight it off, couldn’t fight it because it _was_ her, and she couldn’t fight herself.

Where was the peace and quiet? Where was her safety? Where was—

“Can she hear us?”

“We don’t know—”

“Gotta call—”

“Doctor?”

“—ambulance—”

“I’m not sure…”

“Vanya!”

Her body was a boat set adrift in a storm. The waves battered it into pieces, planks coming undone, the seams ripping in two. She was drowning, she was drowning, she was drowning—

“She’s not breathing—”

“Call an ambulance!”

“—CPR—”

She was beneath the waves. She belonged down here, where the storm became muffled and her sense of existence grew cold. Vanya was a shipwreck and she would drown and settle at the bottom of the ocean, in the silt and sand. Her hull was cracked wide open.

“ _EARTHQUAKE!_ Everyone mov—”

“Oh, my God! Vanya! _VANYA!”_

Her body would be raided for jewels one day. Her body would become a home to sharks and fish; it would grow weeds, house sea urchins and, slowly, an eco-system would crawl out of her remains.

Then she was awake.

The world came into focus in a sharp way; an intake of breath, a scream, the colour fitting together and forming a face, familiar and panicked. There were loud noises, but they stopped blurring and started sounding off individually. Screaming, rumbling, yelling.

She was on her back, then not. Her hands were clasped tightly over her ears and there was a damp slickness at her temples where the nails cut into the skin. Her chest rose and fell quickly as she gulped in oxygen.

She was not a ship wreck.

She was not in a storm.

She was not drowning.

She _was,_ however, in an earthquake.

The familiar face slammed their eyes shut and vanished as they covered her with their body; from above a painful cracking sound echoed, like the roof coming undone.

“You’re okay, you’re okay,” a voice said.

Rubble hit the ground and scattered.

“You’re okay, V, I swear.”

Vanya latched onto the voice, closing her eyes and breathing it in. Her heartrate lowered. The earthquake slowed and fell silent.

There was a pause in the aftermath, and then the first hesitant, “Is everyone okay?” called from somewhere past her vision.

People sounded off as the familiar face appeared before her again. They gripped her arms briefly, concern furrowing their brows.

“Diego,” Vanya said.

His lips pulled into a thin line. “Vanya,” he replied. “You feel alright?”

She felt adrift but firmly in her body. She nodded. “I’m okay.”

Diego paused, like he was checking her for lies, and then yelled back that they were fine.

“What happened?”

Diego scoffed. “What _happened?_ ” He sat back and seemed reluctant about helping her sit up, but did so anyway. His hands wavered like he was ready to catch her if she keeled over, even though he was unhappy about it. “What happened is that I got a call at work saying that _you_ were catatonic at _your_ work and that I had to come and check on you before they bankrupted you with an ambulance call.”

Vanya blinked and looked around. He was right. They were sat at the edge of the stage of the Icarus theatre, where her orchestra rehearsed and performed. Only, they were away from everyone else, where the roof had fallen and hit the centre platform, and were hidden in the wings, where Diego must’ve pulled them during the earthquake.

An earthquake in New York; first responders would be having a hellish day.

Vanya turned back to Diego, who still seemed mad about it all. She couldn’t blame him, really – they weren’t _friends._ Though they were family, he’d never liked her, and frankly, he was probably pretty mad that she had his phone number in the first place; let alone that she might’ve placed it down as her emergency contact.

What kind of pathetic things did it say about Vanya that she had so few friends that she wrote _Diego Hargreeves,_ of all people, down as her emergency number?

Still, she said, “Thanks for coming.”

Diego’s face flashed with surprise before he covered it up. “It’s whatever,” he grumbled. “Are you alright? You went unconscious for a bit there—”

“I did?”

“I had to do CPR, Vanya. What the hell is going on with you?”

She scratched at her wrist, pulling a face. “I don’t know. I—I—”

“What?”

“I think it might’ve started as a panic attack—”

“Panic attacks don’t knock people unconscious. You had an outright _seizure_ , Vanya.”

She didn’t know. What was there for her to know? She was in another place entirely when it happened – she was at the bottom of the goddamn ocean! Vanya sniffed and trained her eyes on the rubble of the ceiling on the stage, where the others were moving away from. Someone was calling 9-1-1, probably to report that the ceiling might fall down, and others were eyeing her uncertainly.

It was Vanya’s kind of bad luck to have a panic attack-turned-seizure in the middle of an earthquake.

“I don’t know. I stopped taking my meds recently.”

Diego’s eyebrows flew up. “You did? Don’t you need them?”

“I dunno.” Vanya shrugged. “I was talking to my therapist and I’m just not sure if I need them. So she made a system for coming off of them, if it’s what I want, and—”

“And you had a panic attack, V.”

“And I had a panic attack.”

Diego sighed and shifted. He climbed to his feet and then reluctantly held out his hands towards Vanya. She paused before taking them and he pulled her up. Her legs felt like a newborn calf’s; all wobbly and unreliable, but she stayed standing even when Diego dropped her hands.

“I’ll drive you to the hospital,” he said.

“You don’t have to—”

“Yes, I do,” he replied. “I’m your brother, so—”

“Right. Thank you.”

He waved a hand vaguely. “First thing tomorrow, though, you’re calling your therapist. And watch where you walk; we don’t know what kind of structural damage that earthquake did.”

Vanya collected her things and apologised to the conductor, who wished her well as she headed out. It was ridiculously embarrassing, she decided, to have done that in front of all her co-workers, but at least Diego worked nearby – at least she didn’t have to die on that stage in front of them, too.

Her brother’s car had seen better days, but he didn’t apologise for it. Diego looked comfortable in the driver’s seat, and said little as he flicked on the radio and wove through the frantic post-earthquake traffic.

Only once they pulled up at the hospital, crowded with cars and ambulances, did he actually look at her. They were twenty-seven years old and they had barely shared a room together in the past decade. He’d sent her a litany of angry voicemails after her book published, and basically cut her off entirely—and yet he’d come when she needed him.

“Why am I your emergency contact?” he asked at last, his voice tired. Vanya wondered what he’d been doing before he rushed over. He worked at a nearby gym – she’d seen him mopping floors once, when she walked past. Was he cleaning the boxing ring? Or taking out the garbage? Was he filling out applications to finally go back to the police academy – that place he was sure he belonged in so many years before?

Vanya said, “Who else is gonna be my contact?”

Diego blinked and she shrugged.

“I know we’re not—close,” she said after a beat, “but you’re all I’ve got if I—if I have a seizure at work, Diego.”

He pressed his lips together thinly. “You never made any friends?” It didn’t sound mean, like he wanted it to hurt, but it still did, a little.

Vanya sighed. “Who’s gonna be friends with ordinary little Vanya Hargreeves?” She tipped her head back against the headrest. “Not even my own siblings wanted to be.” Vanya blinked and shook her head. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to invite you to a pity party.”

Diego cleared his throat. “Medical emergency party is enough for me.”

Vanya nodded. “Thanks again for coming to get me. And—you know, the CPR.”

“You want me to go in with you?”

“Oh—no, no, it’s okay. I’ll go by myself. Probably a lot of people in need of some help, you know, after the earthquake. Maybe _The_ _Kraken_ should be helping them, instead of sitting in a waiting room with me.”

“You know about that?”

Vanya almost smiled. Almost. “Dark-haired man with a mask and _many_ knives saved our celloist from a mugging a few months ago.” She shrugged. “Very few other people that could be.”

Diego nodded. Almost smiled. _Almost._

“It’s cool,” she added. “That you’re still doing the superhero thing, I mean. Vigilantism.”

“Still bad guys out there, even if the Academy isn’t.”

It took a beat of quiet before Vanya pulled the lever to open the door. She was one foot out when Diego said, “You can keep me as your contact, by the way.”

Vanya looked over.

Diego looked away. “I don’t expect there to _be_ more medical emergencies—but if there is—”

“Thanks, Diego.” She hadn’t been planning on removing him anyway.

Vanya climbed out of the car and wound her way through the car park, towards the hospital. Her head was pounding still, and her chest ached. She hadn’t told Diego that he’d probably bruised her during the CPR chest compressions – but, well, didn’t that mean he was doing it right?

When she reached the door, she glanced back at the car park.

Only then did Diego’s car start up and drive away.

Only then did she wish she’d asked him to stay.

Maybe she would at the next medical emergency party.

Vanya turned around and started into the hospital.

**Author's Note:**

> so uhhhhh yes she went off her meds, accessed her powers without meaning to and essentially caused an earthquake and became entirely overwhelmed by the amount of raw power and energy she was unwittingly absorbing! and also diego was there. because i love him.
> 
> thanks for reading!! pretty please talk to me in the comments
> 
> if you have ANY ideas for day 26: if you thought the head trauma was bad... with the prompts "migraine, concussion, blindness" pls leave them in the comments below!!


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